If you see a few lines of atrocious code, you can make a judgement about the programmer. By judging the programmer, you can judge his boss, and by judging his boss you can judge the company. That’s the nature of fractals

If you are on Craigslist to get a sofa, and you see one for free. You think there’s something tragically wrong with it – maybe there are bedbugs. But if you see a sofa on there for $2,500, you think ‘oh man, that sofa must be amazing’. It’s the same thing with art – you set your own value.

Beautiful accidents can happen, but accident is not the basis for design excellence. Purposeful discovery followed by focused, skillful conceptualization and execution is the basis for design excellence.

Too often, look and feel, color scheme, layout, and identity are presented as solutions to problems discussed in these conversations long before regard is given to other less-aesthetic issues that may very well be the root of the problem. The old warning against treating symptom rather than cause comes to mind.

I would say my biggest pet peeve related to the industry would be people focusing on technology instead of design, standards instead of users, and validation rather than innovation. Web standards and best practices are noble goals, but all too often in our community people forget they are a means to an end, not the end itself.

It is important not to let the perfect become the enemy of the good, even when you can agree on what perfect is. Doubly so when you can’t. As unpleasant as it is to be trapped by past mistakes, you can’t make any progress by being afraid of your own shadow during design.

I make all my decisions on intuition. But then, I must know why I made that decision. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect